“Style” isn’t just about posing. It isn’t just about looking “cool”. And it’s certainly more than just colour schemes and costumes.

Spoilers ahead…

In Mafia: Chapter 1, Arun Vijay plays Aryan, a Narcotics Control Bureau officer. No, let’s rephrase that. He plays a stylish Narcotics Control Bureau officer. Aryan wears tight shirts that show off the hours he has slaved away at gyms. His hairstyle gleams with product, and it shows off the hours he spends at salons, shaping and sculpting it just so. There’s no rule that such a man cannot appear on screen with such a look. The problem is that the look is just… a look. It doesn’t define Aryan. Had even one person around him mocked (affectionately) his commitment to this look, the look would have transformed into a character trait. It would have meant that this is a man with a dash of vanity. Aryan, in other words, would have been defined by the screenwriting. But now, he is defined only by the costume design.

BR: There’s a movie named “Musafir” starring Anil Kapoor and Sanjay Dutt. I remember some of the comments for that movie. “Excessive Slo-Mo, costumes and lighting, all in the name of “style” doesn’t fill the gaping void called substance”. This was way back in 2004. Fast-forward 15-16 years and it’s all exactly the same. Talk about stagnation . . . How is it that people here are so much impressed and inspired by what hollywood has been categorising for atleast 3 decades as a “Cheesy B-Movie”?!

A heightened style can be fun, but this sounds like it’s aping “Hollywood style” from pretty old movies. I can’t remember the last time I saw the “sophisticated villain who likes classical music” cliche.

Also, the comment about the neon lighting reminds me of this tweet

(film critic after watching a movie that features some neon lighting) this movie is absolutely nuts, like an acid trip slathered in meth, a delirious dive off the edge, a kaleidoscopic extravaganza that must be experienced to be believed, a phantasmagoric descent into the void

@BR and others: Mysskin said he wanted to play Bernard Hermann’s score in his Psycho and couldn’t because it cost more than the movie. How is Karthick Naren using What a Wonderful World, was there some copyright acknowledgment in the credits?
I searched the internet for music rights of this song and I was caught in a quagmire. Is Karthick Naren just stealing (and is he going to get caught because BR and literally every review of this movie outed him)?

@Naren
Yeah, but this is not an inspiration or a resemblance, this is the original song, right? Proving that it is the same copyrighted track is not a matter of opinion. I was wondering the same thing when Sting’s Desert Rose plays in Dil Chatha Hai.

While some movies we freely borrow from (Rodney Dangerfield’s Back to School for Munna Bhai MBBS), we get the rights in other cases (Aamir’s Forrest Gump, which seems like a loose adaptation as well). Why is this the case? Why is Mysskin calling Sony to use the Psycho shower theme, but Karthick Naren using What a Wonderful World unencumbered?

Mysskin went ahead and used Madonna’s Frozen instead. Don’t know what’s the situation there. The Louis Armstrong song in Mafia . . . maybe ignorance or wilful negligence. Maybe they estimated the legal costs to be cheaper than copyright fee [has happened before].

Suriyan has Madonna’s Lucky Star playing in the background during a workout scene. Guy Ritchie apparently paid $1 Million to use that song in “Snatch”. He was married to Madonna then.

Pizza has Edith Piaf’s Non, Je ne regrette rien.

Poove Poochoodavaa has S.Ve.Sekar dancing to a Michael Jackson song.

Spike Lee used “Chaiyya Chaiyya” in “Inside Man” and mentioned it in the credits. But a more recent movie called “Booksmart” has a soundtrack called “Double Rum Cola” by Fata Boom. The band says that they “sampled” the shehnai rhythm from “Humma Humma” in “Bombay” and that it was not stealing but a common practice. This is indeed a quagmire as u said.

Don’t even get me started on borrowing movies . . . Kaithi has 3 of them mashed up . . . Con Air, Assault on Precinct 13 and Terminator 2.

A phone call scene between Hansika and Jayam Ravi in Romeo Juliet is a blatant rip-off of the “Show me the money” scene from Jerry Maguire.

The guided phone call in Skywalk mall scene in Bogan is a rip-off of the Waterloo station scene from The Bourne Ultimatum.

Manasukkul Maththaappoo . . . One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Some of Mani Ratnam’s films including the latest “Chekka Chivantha Vaanam”, many of Kamal Hassan’s films.

@BR
Is there a regulatory body/process in place here for such situations?

I don’t understand what was so exciting about D-16 in the first place. While it’s natural for a movie to have flaws, plot holes that were really craters?!

A burn victim of that degree who undergoes a major facial reconstruction only to end up with a different identity would have a double grafting at the very least. Yet, this guy had facial hair and what not. I didn’t buy this bit in “Face-Off”, why would I do it here?! Filmmaking being a visual medium, that’s the minimal amount of thinking that needs to be done instead of underestimating the audience.

Rehman’s character could have solved the case way too early in the movie had he asked the right questions to that street peddler [don’t remember the character exactly] when he runs into him with the 3 guys in their flat.

Everyone was gung-ho about the screenplay structure but Scott Frank penned a similar structure in his adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s “Out of Sight”. John Sayle’s “Lone Star” has a similar structure too.

This guy is still pushing for his first screenplay that hasn’t been filmed yet because apparently it’s way too complex for the audience here. I’d like to c that come to light.

Naren: To be honest, I had all these questions, but only after I viewed it. The film had the right atmosphere, was tight. If I am glued to the screen during the duration of the film and then I come up with, how many plot holes were there, I’d say it is a better film because it made up for it’s plot holes by airtight and efficient filmmaking.

The same story (outline) with a different treatment won’t be the same. Also regarding that screenplay, I think he is a big Nolan fanboy and would have tried to go completely bonkers with the timeline and stuff.

Amit Joki
Having heard the hype before I saw the movie, I was intrigued too. But like BR said, in a whodunit movie, the critics look for the intensity, the traversal through the maze, the plot ingenuity etc. This movie was all too familiar and juvenile in all those cases. A different attempt at screenplay in a Tamil movie does not compensate for all those.

Just for once, I’d like to see the cops in a Tamil movie NOT being OTT or mind-numbingly stupid or sleazy. The much revered “Kaakka Kaakka” is not a good one either. Talking with a straight face and intensity is Gautham Menon’s way of masquerading drivel, flaws and things like the movie being influenced by “The Untouchables” and “Seven”. Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu is viewed positively only due to Kamal Hassan. Had it not been such a lead that movie would’ve been one narcoleptic carnival. Anyway, Rehman’s character in D-16 was so uneven and bleak. More importantly the exposition . . . blah blah blah blah. I simply don’t understand the OCD to have pages and pages of verbal exposition, explaining things as though the audience are all kids.

The cops in “Psycho” either are distinctly absent or are piggybacking on the blind hero’s crusade. The Sub-Inspector who is killed . . . he showed no signs of apathy or weariness but was just a passive presence. But when he was strapped to the table, his talk and his attitude took me in for a surprise and not in a good way. There was no foreshadowing. BTW, the dead body position, the first location and even that cop’s physical prescence . . . influenced by True Detective – Season 1.

Nithya Menen’s character, the ex-cop who is supposed to be helping the hero, spends most of her time either verbally abusing her mother or hurling expletives at others. I’m guessing these are supposed to be the character traits that exhibit her misery [very shallow, BTW]. The problem is that none of these traits are in conjunction with the work that she has committed to do. Just when I was about to completely give up on the movie, she finally makes one lousy contribution to the whole case by watching the video again. Even ex-cops are treated very poorly in Tamil movies.

It’s either all these or a slo-mo drag of “objects” like in “Mafia – Chapter I”.

Naren/HH Prasanna: It depends whether the filmmaker used the entire What A Wonderful World song in the film or just an excerpt. I haven’t seen the film so I don’t know which way it was but I am not sure using a portion of the song is an issue because it’s done all the time in movies. Not that song specifically but songs in general. Is the song just a prop in the movie or is it part of the soundtrack, that’s what I’d look at.

Naren: Thanks for the heads up on Sweet Child O’ Mine. Another one is the riff of Nirvana’s Come As You Are, lifted from Killing Joke’s Eighties. Radiohead’s Creep riffs off The Hollies “The Air That I Breathe” and Subterranean Homesick Blues from Nick Drake’s Parasite. Re Raja, Rum Pum Pum doesn’t sound like Jailhouse Rock to me. However, his most glaring copies are both from Priya – Akkarai Cheemai from Simon Dupree’s Kite and Darling Darling from Boney M’s Sunny (Sunny especially is Dekho Ab Toh bad). Simon Dupree is the pen name of Derek Shulman who went on to form the ultra progressive rock band Gentle Giant (I believe the guitarist Prasanna is a fan) and later became a successful A&R executive, responsible for signing up Dream Theater to Elektra, giving prog a leg up again in the hard times when the press relentlessly bad mouthed it.

@Madan
No problem. BTW, it’s tricky as our musicians are experts in blending the original with their own. So it might not sound the same to all ears. Another one of Illayaraja’s covers is “A B C Nee Vaasi” from Oru Kaithiyin Diary which has George Bizet’s “L’Arlesienne Suite No. 1, 4th Movement – Carillon” all over it.

Anyway, we’re talking about copyright issues for songs from the 20th century. Bizet’s song goes back to the 19th century. Don’t know how that can be handled. We also have lifts from Beethoven, Mozart that go even further back to the 18th century. The van toppling scene in Saroja has one of the classics playing in the background.

@H. Prasanna
Regarding borrowing movies, I just want to add a couple more –

Saroja . . . Judgment Night [1993]

The only one case that I know which goes in the other direction is Weekend at Bernie’s being inspired by Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron. But Kamal Hassan’s Magalir Mattum . . . the movie by itself is a lift from “9 to 5” [1980] but Nagesh’s character being carried all over the city by the females, that could very well have been inspired by Weekend at Bernie’s.

Naren: I pretty much don’t consider borrowing from Bach, Mozart etc as copying. If compositions don’t have an expiry date, it would become impossible to make any new music at all, lol. That way, almost every other Ilayaraja song is a Bach Bouree. For examples, check the intro of Guruvayurappa or Oru Kiliyin. Even the piano intro of Thenmadurai is straight up Bach. On similar lines, I am pretty sure ABBA’s As Good As New takes its chorus from a Mozart composition, just can’t say which one because he composed so much music in his short life. Steely Dan is another band with a chequered record, the piano motif of their iconic Rikki Don’t Lose Their Number itself being borrowed. As the old saying goes, mortals borrow, geniuses steal. But it’s the other way round in India as the mediocre composers like Pritam, Anu Malik and Sirpi copy boldly while Ilayaraja or RDB took pride in appropriating the original into their own style and developing it afresh. RD’s Tum Ho Mere Dil Ki Dhadkan is a good example of this. Lovely song but unfortunately copied from Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale.

I have heard that some Tamil films face roadblocks at the time of release with a claim that some part or whole of an uncredited screenwriter’s work was used, e.g., Linga and Sarkar. But when it comes to loose but obvious adaptations from abroad, there seems to be no contention. Now that foreign production houses are in India producing films, I am assuming it would be a direct loss of revenue for them if a copyright is infringed. However, it has not deterred our filmmakers from recreating frame by frame some scenes, and playing some original songs. I assume this foreign/local divide is because of the how the foreign copyright laws apply in India. Like China with technology, in India with intellectual property, it seems to be open season all around.

But, some of these Indian films get a worldwide release, which is confounding. Americans and Europeans are very serious about copyright infringement: even a stray use of logo or a clipping of film, or a small bit of song, is credited and accounted for in all their films. Any remixes or remakes are also credited and the copyright is acknowledged.

Don’t know if anyone would read this but I heard that 12 seconds of copyrighted music is allowed in movies under “Fair Use”. For example, Arjun Reddy also used the exact song “What a wonderful world” which plays during the funeral of the grandmother. And am pretty sure Mafia used the song for not too long. Now if it was something like a minute or two then obviously it would be more serious.